


Leave Me Out of This

by Mr_Pinniped



Series: Robot Dads [2]
Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Gyro has Anxiety, One Shot, Set During Happy Birthday Doofus Drake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:14:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27431851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mr_Pinniped/pseuds/Mr_Pinniped
Summary: Gyro scrolled through the feed again.  There were still no reports of lasers, or fires, or destruction.  Had Mark really done it?  Had he overridden 2-BO’s programming?
Series: Robot Dads [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2083278
Comments: 3
Kudos: 26





	Leave Me Out of This

_ “I’m a perfectly competent programmer, and this thing has to be almost 20 years old! I can fix it!”  _

_ “You don’t understand! You don’t know what it’s capable of!” _

Gyro stared at his monitor as bits of yesterday’s argument echoed in his head. He wanted so badly to focus, to lose himself in an optimization equation, or to follow a circuit to its completion, but he couldn’t. His mouse hovered over the Webstagram browser tab, and his leg jiggled up and down as he clicked it. 

Sure enough, Mark Beaks had posted again, with a picture of himself and a small boy eating ice cream cones.  _ Can it eat?  _ Gyro thought, looking at the child in the picture. His eyes moved down to the caption. Mark was calling it his son now. It was believable enough, Gyro supposed. Through some bizarre coincidence, the android that Gyro had built twenty years ago looked just like the Waddle CEO. 

He scrolled through the feed again. There were still no reports of lasers, or fires, or destruction. He re-opened his graphing software and typed an equation or two, before checking the local news, and then Webstagram again. Had Mark really done it? Had he overridden 2-BO’s programming?

Gyro thought back to their conversation the day before. Mark had texted him, out of the blue, asking if he could come take a look at some old tech Mark had found in the junkyard. It had been a while since they’d talked , but Gyro was curious. He’d taken a bus to Waddle headquarters after work, only to see the biggest mistake of his life plugged into Mark’s computer. 

Thank the stars Mark had powered 2BO down to reprogram it. Gyro was sure he would have broken down completely if it had seen him, tried to  _ talk  _ to him. 

Maybe Mark  _ had  _ been able to reprogram 2BO completely? The selfies on Mark’s Webstagram page certainly made it  _ seem _ like a regular child. 

“ _ It acts friendly, but it’s built to be a weapon! There’s literally no way to know when it will turn on you!” _

_ "Don't be ridiculous. Why would anyone make a defense drone that looks and acts like a cute little kid?" _

Gyro stood up from his desk and absently walked over to the coffee pot. He started to add more to his mug, then poured it down the drain instead. No sense making himself even more jittery than he already was. He checked Webstagram again. Apparently Mark and 2-BO, or “Boyd” as he was calling it, were flying kites now. That was stupid. The robot literally had rockets on its feet. What was the point of kites? And yet, there it stood, looking happy, looking indistinguishable from any other kid just enjoying a day with his dad.

With his dad...Mark just  _ had _ to take this from him too! 2-BO was Gyro’s creation! Maybe… just maybe, if Gyro had been a little smarter, or a little braver, all those years ago- he could have been the one flying kites and eating ice cream, sharing his joy with the most advanced AI the world had ever seen. He could do it again, of course. Make another one, even better than the first. 3-BO, perhaps. He was sure he had at least some of the original code stashed away on a floppy disk somewhere. If he’d lost parts of it when the lab in Tokyolk burned, he could reconstruct it from memory. But he wouldn’t build another. If something as simple as a lightbulb-with-legs could turn evil, another android as complex as 2-BO most certainly would. 

And things had been going so well with Mark, too. They were almost on friendly terms again, after years of animosity. But Mark hadn’t listened to his warnings about the android. Insisting he could take care of it, that it would be great for his image, blah, blah, blah. He never listened to Gyro, even when it was important.  _ Especially _ when it was important.

Gyro realized he was feeling slightly nauseous. He needed to quiet his mind- he hadn’t been agitated enough to experience physical symptoms like this in a long time. Gyro folded his arms on the desk and laid down his head, staring out the window into the bay as he tried to focus on his breathing. A couple of sea stars were crawling up the glass. He watched the little tube feet extending and contracting for a while, and considered the implications of hydraulic locomotion. Could he use the same idea to create an underwater vehicle that explored the seafloor, perhaps? But what if there was a malfunction at that depth? Crushing darkness and rushing water filled his imagination, and he turned his head away from the window. He closed his eyes, and started calculating the square roots of every integer. He’d stop when he got to 200. 300, if he had too. Whatever it took. 

He must have fallen asleep, because by the time he opened his eyes, the lab was dark, and his phone was buzzing. He glanced at the notification.

“Gyro, you were right. I messed up.” It was a text from Mark Beaks.

Gyro sat bolt upright, heart pounding. If 2-BO had glitched, if Duckburg was burning, if…

He tapped his keyboard and waited for what felt for an eternity as the browser booted up and connected to the Wi-Fi. The authorities in Tokyolk could find out, if 2-BO had gone rogue again. Scrooge’s protection only meant so much. Gyro could absolutely go to jail again over this. Why hadn’t 2-BO been destroyed years ago? Why, yesterday, had he stormed out of Mark’s office, determined to let the parrot face the consequences of his own actions, rather than taking the robot and deactivating it right then? It was all going to fall back on him, he knew it. 

The news page finally loaded. There were no breaking stories about a rogue robot, no rockets, no fiery laser-beams, no chainsaw-arms. Gyro scrolled further, searching frantically. If Mark had messed up, if 2-BO was glitching, there should be a story somewhere.

He left the news site and pulled up the local police blotter. Nothing. Maybe something on social media? He scanned post after post. Mark’s page gave no clear answers. Where had they even been that day? 

Finally, after several minutes and a rather disconcerting visit to Doofus Drake’s personal website, he had pieced together enough clues to know that 2-BO hadn’t destroyed Duckburg. He leaned back in his chair, feeling his racing heart finally settle down. He couldn’t bring himself to care about the details. He was starting to feel nauseous again, as if he’d tried to run a marathon after eating a five-course meal. 

He looked at his phone again, the text from Mark still on the screen. That idiot. 

Gyro sighed. He should probably respond. 

He didn’t really want to.

He finally tapped at the keys. “I warned you. Now leave me out of this.” 

Angry tears splashed the phone as he threw it down. 


End file.
